


Last Men Standing

by wynnebat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Dimension Travel, EWE, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, POV Harry Potter, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05, Reunions, Unspeakable Harry Potter, Veil of Death (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: Harry’s already running when Sirius sees him. At this distance, he can’t see Sirius’ gray eyes, but he can see the way Sirius’ mouth parts in silent surprise. He’s different. Sirius’ hair is short, his jaw scarred. He’s wearing well-worn survival gear and there’s a gun strapped to his side.And yet he breathes, “Harry,” with such fierce wonder, no different than all those years ago when he’d seen Harry for the first time. All the rest of it doesn’t matter.





	Last Men Standing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Trope Bingo](https://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) square: crossover.
> 
> This was going to be gen but I accidentally made Sirius too hot.

“I’m looking for Sirius Black,” Harry expects to have to say, as he has over a hundred times now.

He’d spun the wheel of chance on the veil of death yet again and stepped into another world. When he’d started this project, he’d thought he would either find Sirius after a few attempts or give up on the idea once he lost hope. A year later, he hasn’t done either, but he’s found something almost as important: his sense of adventure. He would’ve stopped these impossible journeys months ago had his interest only been for Sirius, but instead, Harry’s wandered through so many different places. He’s been chased by zombies, ninjas, werewolves. He’s saved and he’s killed. Hermione and Ron have even gone with him a couple times; on their trip back, Ron had called him a madman, but the both of them understood Harry’s intentions better.

Still, there doesn’t seem to be much to this world outside of its attempts to kill him. There are worm-like creatures that jump out from the sand and try to bury under his skin, sandstorms with shards of glass, and no civilization for hours of broomflight. The only reason Harry continues on is that his spellwork sensed another magic user somewhere on this planet, which isn’t something he encounters often. He’s stopped getting his hopes up too high—he’s met six different versions of Loki and hardly any human magic users—but an ember of hope still glows in his heart.

Today could be the day.

If he doesn’t get eaten by sand worms, that is.

Six hours later, just as Harry is about to give up and make camp, sand worms or no, the desert suddenly stops. Behind a row of sandy hills is an immense forest.

“Merlin,” Harry murmurs as his broom continues its flight. The stark divide between desert and forest should be magical, but he can’t sense anything of the like. There’s no protection bubble over this forest. It’s simply a miracle. Birds fly and animals roam. Harry stops to wash his face in the lake, getting rid of the coating of sand everywhere from his eyelashes to the backs of his ears.

When he turns around, there is a girl pointing a bow at him. She’s young, no older than a first year, but she looks twice as dangerous. In response, Harry raises his hands.

“I mean no harm,” Harry calls out, hoping she understands English. He can try the few phrases he’s picked up from other languages, but English is his best bet. “My name is Harry Potter. I’m looking for Sirius Black.”

“You’re Harry?” she asks, though she doesn’t lower her weapon. “Harry, from the stories?”

Harry’s hopes rise so fast that he’s going to have a fucking stroke from hopelessness if this girl is mistaking him for another Harry. “Yes. Yes, I think I am.”

She watches him carefully. “Harry can do magic.”

“What do you want to see?”

“Sirius says Harry can create a patronus. It’s an animal that protects you from soul-sucking monsters who keep people in prison.”

Harry smiles. “And Harry’s takes the form of a deer, right?” At her nod, he carefully reaches for his wand and pulls it out of his back pocket. He’s never been able to rid himself of the bad habit of keeping it there, but he’s also never blown off his buttocks. “ _Expecto Patronum_!”

Prongs huffs at Harry for summoning him without a threat present, but he steadfastly approaches the girl. Her bow drops to the ground as she reaches to touch his mane. Glittering light spreads from the patronus to the girl and she stares at her hands with wonder while the magic slowly dissipates. And that’s it, that’s all that’s needed. She believes him. They walk together to a village in the middle of the forest. Harry finds her name is Madi and that her world contains only three people, with the exception of those trapped below ground for five years. Why it has to be five years, Harry doesn’t understand, but it doesn’t matter.

Up ahead, he sees an impossible man in this impossible forest. Harry’s already running when Sirius sees him. At this distance, he can’t see Sirius’ gray eyes, but he can see the way Sirius’ mouth parts in silent surprise. He’s different. Sirius’ hair is short, his jaw scarred. He’s wearing well-worn survival gear and there’s a gun strapped to his side.

And yet he breathes, “Harry,” with such fierce wonder, no different than all those years ago when he’d seen Harry for the first time. All the rest of it doesn’t matter. Harry hugs him tightly as soon as he’s within reach. Sirius hugs back even tighter. They’re almost of a height now. They’re two men changed by time and circumstance, but all Harry can feel is joy and relief. Finally, Sirius is here. Everything else is secondary.

"I've missed you so fucking much," Harry tells him. He's imagined saying the words so many times, on and on until he'd forgotten the exact shade of Sirius' eyes. Photographs didn't capture colors as perfectly as Harry wished, nor could they capture the exact shade of happiness that inhabits Sirius' gaze. It’s nice, wonderful, perfect. He’s never loved anyone’s hugs as much as he has Sirius’. He’s never loved anyone like he has Sirius, period. Not with the same all-consuming spirit. He tore through time to save Sirius from dementors and through dimensions to find him again.

"Me too, Harry. Me too."

Sirius welcomes him inside the silent little village inside the forest, where Harry's introduced to the only other person there. Clarke Griffin has shoulder length blonde hair streaked with red and wears the same dark pseudo-military gear as Sirius. Harry would ask if Sirius had joined a military cult if he weren't worried that Sirius actually had. Like Madi, Clark is wary of him, but with a wry smile she says, "Sirius talks so much about you that I feel like I know you already."

"You got a head start," Harry says, trying not to feel a pang of something as he looks between them. He doesn't really know Sirius' type, but Sirius and Clarke seem to be the last two adult human beings on Earth. It's not jealousy exactly—or if it is, then Harry would rather it weren't—it's the knowledge that he's missed so much of Sirius' life. They've met again, and once again so many years have passed. Not as many as the first time, but enough to leave them completely different people. "Tell me about yourself? What is this place?"

"It's a long story," Clarke tells him, sharing a look with Sirius. Madi's oblivious to it, more interested in showing Harry around the empty village, but Harry finds the whole thing rather concerning.

 _Where is everyone,_ he keeps thinking, because this is just plain weird. It takes until dinner, which is cooked over a campfire at the center of the village, that Clarke begins the story of planet Earth and its destruction.

“The world ended for the first time in 2052,” Clarke says, and Harry’s seen a lot of things, but he’s never heard someone number all the apocalyptic events they’d survived through. Or their ancestors, anyway. After the nuclear destruction of the earth, humanity fled to a space station for 97 years. Clarke was one of a hundred people sent down to test whether the planet was inhabitable. And it was—people, grounders they were called, had been living here the entire time, inured to the radiation.

That’s where Sirius’ story comes in. “I landed in Trikru territory and was taken hostage nearly immediately. Whatever skills I had, they didn’t include surviving in the wilderness or staying inconspicuous. Trikru assumed I was a Skaikru spy. Skaikru—” He nodded at Clarke. “—had no idea who I was. They snapped my wand—they didn't realize it what it was, but they realized it was important to me—and when I wouldn't—couldn't—tell them what they wanted to hear, they destroyed it.”

“Bellamy apologized for that,” Clarke says, her words sounding routine.

“That does me a lot of good,” Sirius huffs in reply. To Harry, he clarifies, “Bellamy’s her boyfriend. He’s in space right now.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“You’re telling the story all wrong,” Madi huffs, grabbing another skewer of meat from the fire. “I’m telling it now.”

By the end of the night, Harry’s able to piece together a barely believable version of events from his three storytellers. It’s not that any of them lie—although Harry notices Sirius’ habit of protecting Harry from the harshness of the truth is still in play—but their points of view are so different. Sirius, the man who fell from the sky, but not from any space station. Clarke, who’s young but saved her people time and again. Madi, who spent her life hiding until there was no one to hide from.

Harry wonders when Sirius told everyone the truth about his old world. Maybe the first time someone saw him perform accidental magic. It must have been freeing for him to just be able to say whatever he wanted. There’s no statute of secrecy here, no minister’s order for Sirius to be caught and executed. History itself is different here. Harry wonders if the magical societies had fled from the radiation without trying to save the muggle ones, or if there simply wasn't magic in this world to begin with. He can't imagine that muggleborns and halfbloods and sympathetic purebloods wouldn't have tried to save the human race from extinction.

Eventually, Clarke gets up, ostensibly to send Madi to bed. Considering she doesn't return, Harry doesn't doubt that she also just wants to give them some time to talk privately. Harry foregoes his log in favor of sitting down next to Sirius. He blames the cut of the log for why he sits down close enough for their thighs to touch. With the only light coming from the fire, it feels as though they're the only two people in the world.

"You were thrown from one war only to be dropped in the middle of another," Harry says, shaking his head.

"One? Try half a dozen, the sides changing at the drop of a wand," Sirius replies. The fire's light doesn't chase away all the shadows from his face.

"It sounds terrible."

“It wasn’t all bad,” Sirius says with a crooked smile. “Better than Azkaban. You didn't say much about your war earlier."

"I didn't want to add to all the death," Harry replies. Sirius' shoulder bumps against his and doesn't leave, the companionable closeness bolstering Harry's voice. "It's not a nice story, but, uh. It was no apocalypse."

There's that much, at least. No matter how much it felt as though the entire world collapsed around him when the ministry fell, it wasn't actually the end of the world. No fire destroyed society as it was. It was tragic and grueling, but it was not the end. In the years since, the wizarding world has managed to heal a lot of the damage Voldemort caused in it, even though there is no way to undo the deaths of everyone who fought against Voldemort or were simply caught up in the struggle. Harry tells Sirius about the prophecy, about Dumbledore's death, about that year on the run. He tells him about the hallows, though he's never been able to quite put into words the way they feel. He tries to keep his own death brief, but Sirius doesn't let him, holding Harry's hand tightly as he realizes his godson died once during the war. It's tired grief in Sirius' expression when Harry tells him how many members of the Order died, primarily Sirius' final remaining closest friend. There's not a single marauder in Harry's home world anymore; hell, there aren't many from the marauders' year, either. Not even Snape, the consummate Slytherin, made it out alive.

"I went back to Hogwarts for my final year," Harry says. "Hermione insisted on it, even though the auror department would've taken Ron and me in a heartbeat. I'm glad she did. I needed that break to figure out what I wanted out of my life, what really drew me. Because if I'm honest, I don't want to deal with rising Dark Lords for my career. I ended up working for the Unspeakables. It's how I figured out that the veil of death is more of a door to other worlds than a pathway to death."

"And that's all you needed to look for me?"

“Somewhere, you were alive. I missed you,” Harry tells him. It’s obvious, but maybe it needs to be said again. He'll say it as many times as Sirius needs to hear it.

“You missed me so much that you went searching for me through the veil,” Sirius says, shaking his head, amazement thrumming through his rough voice. “Hell, Harry. How long did it take?”

“A while,” Harry admits. “Exactly as long as it needed to." He won’t claim that it had been easy, but the decision itself had been, the one he’d made each and every time he’d stepped into the veil. Is there anything he wants more than to search for Sirius? Always no. And if he had never found Sirius, Harry wouldn't have considered his time wasted. He's learned so much, gone so far, and he doesn't regret a single day. "Will you come back with me?"

"It's possible?"

Harry nods.

Sirius turns away, staring out at the fire. The flames are completely natural reds and oranges, nothing like the green of floo powder or the blue of bluebell flames. Harry hasn't lit a fireplace in years; he prefers apparition to the floo, though George keeps claiming he's close to developing a much better floo powder. They sit there for a while, side to side, shoulder to shoulder, until Sirius sighs.

"I would've given anything to hear that in my first year on this planet. I hated it here. I'd thought the first war and Azkaban were violent, but here? No one thinks twice about shooting you, whether it's with a bow and arrow or a gun. Factions had been decided and I was on the outside, useless as a prisoner and wandless."

"What changed?" Because something had to. Sirius is armed, and he's not friendless.

"I saved Clarke’s mother's life with wandless magic. Mine, too, but Abby is one of the few doctors on this planet and one of the leaders of Skaikru. I found allies, helped those allies save the world, nearly got myself killed so many times I've lost count. It took me a long time to accept this place as my home, but eventually, I did. There wasn't a veil that I could find my way back through; this was all I had. I have friends in the bunker, family in Madi and Clarke and some of the idiots stuck in space and in the bunker. Clarke and Madi are nightbloods, but my magic is what keeps me alive until the radiation clears. This place, it's nearly unlivable, but I've managed it this long. Leaving would mean leaving the people I've begun to care about here, and just forgetting everything I've done to make a mark on this world."

 _What about me?_ Harry thinks. But he's not a kid any longer, not lost or confused, directionless and traumatized. He has his own life to lead. If he has to start anew, then that's what he'll do. "Then I'll be the one to stay."

"You can't do that," Sirius immediately says, turning so that he can face Harry head-on. “You can’t stay here. This place, it’s... there’s no magic here, so I can’t say it’s cursed, but it's dangerous. Harry, please. I don't want you to be unhappy here just because it's where I've made my life."

"You're saying you want me to leave when I just found you?" Harry can't even believe his ears.

"Yes. I know you won’t understand, but I have to do this, and you have to leave. I can walk you back to the portal tomorrow."

Harry huffs humorlessly. He looks around and sees nothing good about this world except for Sirius.

He's never had a proper argument with Sirius. They've never spent enough time together to argue; as angry as Harry had been as a teenager, he hadn't wanted to waste the precious time he had with Sirius. And if he's honest, there's always been something more than anger on his mind around Sirius. Harry's points are rational enough, he feels; he emphasizes that he's an adult who can make his own fucking decisions, even if that means staying in a world that's 99% a post-atomic wasteland with carnivorous worms in the sand.

When Sirius storms out—or rather, into one of the houses—Harry is left by the campfire, drinking an unfamiliar tea that's long gone cold. The night is cool, the fire warm, and there aren't even any mosquitoes to bite at him. It's not a bad place if one ignores some key details.

"I guess you heard some of that?" Harry says as he sees Clarke from the corner of his eye.

"Some," Clarke agrees.

"He wants me to leave." After everything Harry's done to find him, Sirius would rather see him gone. He won't be able to come back after he leaves; once the portal closes behind him, he'd have to travel through hundreds, maybe thousands, of worlds to find this specific one again. Harry's rarely landed on the same world twice.

She takes a seat on a nearby log, warms her hands over the fire. “He’s a good man,” Clarke tells Harry, as though Harry didn’t already know. As though he didn’t know how good Sirius could be, the way he’d go into battle just to keep Harry safe. "He's just trying to keep you safe."

“Too good,” Harry replies. "I don't need to be coddled."

"Caring for someone isn't coddling them. I'd want to keep Madi safe at all costs, even if it meant never seeing her again."

Harry sighs. That's... maybe that's what it is on Sirius' end, paternal overprotectiveness. Harry's not sure he appreciates it. He hasn't needed a dad in a very long time. He loves Sirius, but not like that. "But you'd give her the chance to make her own mistakes. He never mentioned a girlfriend. Is that why he wants to stay?"

Clarke shrugs. "He's had a few, but I don't think any of them were serious. He's not pining after any of them. Look, there isn't a single person, from this world or yours, who he talked about as much as he talked about you. He loves you more than anyone in any world; you shouldn't doubt that. All he's doing is trying to protect you."

Fuck that. Harry's been in and out of warzones, dropped in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, nearly drowned on the way to the kingdom of Atlantis. He hasn't spent all this time searching for Sirius because it was easy. Sirius is never easy, no matter how he may come across. Loving him, grieving him, hoping against all logic? If Harry wanted easy, he wouldn't be sitting here right now, thinking of ways to tell Sirius that Harry is staying.

Back when he'd been a teenager, he'd buried these feelings down deep inside himself, because unlike the near constant confusion and anger he'd felt as a teenager, this was one thing he couldn't let himself feel. He couldn't put in on Sirius, who'd been stuck in his mother's house, grieving for the life he could've had if not for Azkaban, for the friends he'd lost in the first war. It wouldn't have been fair.

Sirius isn't that man anymore; Harry isn't that teenager.

The feelings aren't all that different, though.

Once an idiot, always an idiot. Harry hadn't expected that they'd run into each other's arms and Sirius would profess his undying love for him. They could live in the same area, meet up for meals, get to know each other properly. Maybe as godfather and godson, maybe as friends. In Harry's wildest fantasies, as more. It all hinged on them having more time together than this. He'd made plans to either bring Sirius home with him or to stay in whatever world Sirius may have built his new life. He'd even prepared to meet a Sirius who'd married and started a family, who would be happy to see Harry but had long ago abandoned hope in his old world.

He just hadn't expected this. Silly of him; Sirius is an expert on the unexpected. Harry stands, placing his mug down on the ground. "Fuck it, Sirius will just have to get over it."

"You'll stay even if he doesn't approve of it?" Clarke asks. "Even if it means he won't forgive you?"

"I'll beg for forgiveness later," Harry replies. "I hear I have a cute face."

A huff of laughter. "We'll make a Skaikru out of you yet." She reaches inside one of the chests near the fire pit, rummaging around until she finds a slightly misshapen candle. Once it's lit, she hands it to Harry and points to one of the homes. "That one is his."

"Thanks."

Harry takes that bit of the fire with him as he opens the door. There’s no lock. Of course there isn’t. It strikes him that this house is the opposite of the Black family home in every single way. Whatever else, Sirius was able to get away from Grimmauld Place completely. From the explanations at the campfire, Harry knows that the house wasn't Sirius' originally, having belonged to one of the members of the village. Sirius has made it his home in the time he's been here. There are fishing and hunting tools arranged on shelves near the door, a pair of well-worn boots on the mat. Harry leaves his own shoes next to Sirius', feeling warm at the domesticity of it. He's in for a future of arguments and the long road to Sirius' acceptance, but at least he'll be here.

The house is all wide open spaces, with a curtain at the back behind which Harry sees flickers of light. To his left is a kitchen area, to his right, a sitting area. He spies three of Clarke's drawings and one watercolor at the center of the room that doesn't seem to be Clarke's style. Madi's, maybe, or perhaps Sirius decided to pick up a paintbrush. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing. In the sitting area, there's a lumpy, handmade couch that has a blanket and pillow sitting atop it.

Harry foregoes it in favor of parting the curtain, behind which he finds Sirius sitting up in bed. A candle sits on the bedside table, giving off enough light for Sirius to be able to write in a leather-bound journal. He's using a pen. Harry has a moment of utter absurdity. It _would_ take a full apocalypse for a pureblood wizard to use a pen. Weariness is evident in Sirius' expressive face as he meets Harry's gaze.

"I'm not here to fight," Harry tells him, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He reaches across Sirius to place his candle on the little table, relishing in the momentary closeness. Someday, he might stop being delighted at every bit of closeness, but it won't be anytime soon. Sirius' presence is still too new.

Maybe Sirius feels the same way, because he reaches for Harry simply to run a hand along his shoulder, just to have a point of contact. "Good, because I'd rather not. I take it this is just a delay until the morning."

Harry gives up the ghost of boundaries, settling down on the bed next to Sirius. At least Sirius doesn't seem to mind. "I've waged a one-man war before. I can do it again. What's that?"

Sirius opens the notebook to the first page, which says _Madi's Fairy Tales_ in large, uppercase letters. In smaller ones, _recorded from the terrible memory of Sirius Orion Black_. "My parents were never the type to read bedtime stories, but I still picked on a couple. The rest are either very embellished or entirely made up. I've been told my writing is improving, though still not up to Clarke's level."

"You know, I could ask my colleagues to send some fairy tale books through the portal, along with a wand and anything else you might need," Harry says. At Sirius' disgruntled sigh, Harry gives in, and says, "Fine, fine. Tomorrow." Harry mimes the wand movements for the silencing spell.

"I haven't seen that in a while." Sirius' tone is wistful.

Merlin, Harry wants to beat some sense into him. With his lips. "Tell me about something happy in this world."

Sirius closes the journal, sticking the pen inside and placing both on the bedside table. "Harry..."

"I want to know that you had at least some good moments here in between the multiple apocalypses. Just, tell me about what makes you want to stay." Harry hopes his tone isn't too close to pleading. He hasn't gone through nearly enough arguments to get all the way down to pleading.

They talk until their voices grow quiet. Sirius tells him about helping deliver a baby, the first one born from the denizens of the spaceship. He'd been the only one around and it had been a spectacularly bad idea, but both the mom and the baby lived, and even Sirius' sanity survived the process. He talks about the bravery of the grounders and the stupidity of the sky people, then the stupidity of the sky people and the bravery of the grounders, both times with stories of growing camaraderie. He mentions his friends down in the bunker by name and talks about how hard every one of them fought to stay alive. It's a cold, dark world, but there is such brightness in it during the lulls between strife and pain.

Eventually, Sirius douses both of the candles and turns back to Harry, his voice low as he says, "You don't have to go. The couch is lumpy."

"Okay," Harry says. He doesn't move to get under the covers. Sometime during the night, he'd moved to a half laying, half sitting position, but now Harry only sits up on the bed, his legs underneath him.

Under the faint light of the moon through the windows, Harry can see Sirius' eyes. Sirius is shadow and light, brilliant like the constellation he was named for, and Harry's never been able to look away. He was supposed to do the smart thing and move on with his life, but Sirius' eyes never properly left him. Neither did the mystery of the veil of death. Harry's uncovered every damn mystery and found a man no one had believed he would find. There's only one mystery left, if it can even be called that. It exists only in Harry's mind, only in late night musings and tired sighs. What if, what if.

Harry blames the darkness for inching closer. He's just trying to see Sirius better in the absence of proper light. It's not enough, to go from seeing him in candlelight to nearly nothing under the moonlight. All Harry wants—

In the end it isn't Harry who moves.

Sirius brushes his lips against Harry's in something lovely and soft, just barely more than only air against his lips. It lasts a moment, and then Sirius is saying, "I don't know what I'm doing."

"Yeah, you do."

Whether Sirius is trying to scare him off or giving into his desires because it's the last time they'll ever see each other, Harry will call his bluff. Every time, in every place, through every world and death itself. Harry tugs Sirius closer, spreads his hands against Sirius' shoulders and chest. Harry kisses him as deeply as he dares, waiting out the few uncertain moments it takes Sirius to get with the program completely. And then it's just them, two people who maybe shouldn't, but would anyway. Sirius' home is far enough away from Clarke and Madi's, and with that thought Harry forgets the rest of the world in favor of the entirety of his attention resting on one room, one bed, one man. The rest of the world can burn—and it has, twice.

*

When Harry wakes up, there is an arm wrapped around his bare chest. It's a nice arm, thick and dark-haired, and Harry might never be able to get over just how attractive Sirius is. He hopes he never has to. He never wants to stop. All those feelings that he hadn’t been able to understand at age fifteen, he still feels them now in his twenties, except he no longer has ignorance and anger to shield himself with. After some quality time spent ogling, Harry's gaze drifts up to find Sirius' eyes already open. He's looking down at Harry with fondness plain in his gaze. Sirius' other hand trails through Harry's hair, though Harry knows from experience it won't make it any less messy.

"Do you regret it?" Harry asks. He may as well know how much he still has to overcome.

"There's a lot I regret in my life," Sirius says, sighing. "But I've never been all that morally pristine. This place hasn't inspired me to be any better."

"Good." Harry trails his hand over a particularly nasty scar on Sirius' chest. And across the muscles of his chest, because damn if this world hadn't been good for this one thing. "That's one less thing to argue over. Do you want to begin with the fact that I'm just not leaving or the many ways I can get help from my dimension to make this one more livable?"

Sirius breathes out a huff of air, but his lips are quirked upward. He's in a good mood the morning after; Harry would like to say he'd planned it this way, but like all his plans, it's a happy accident. “You’re more stubborn than I remember you being. And you were plenty stubborn before.”

“That’s what happens over time. Adulthood means taking all your terrible teenage habits and exacerbating them." Harry is tempted to see if Sirius' cock is feeling as inspired this morning as his own. He forces himself to wait, only rubbing circles with his thumb against Sirius' chest as he thinks about his next words. He and Sirius really do need to actually talk. "I know you're scared."

"Gryffindors don't get scared." Sirius shakes his head. "It's been so long since I've been able to say that to anyone who could understand it."

"Then how do you explain wanting me off your world?"

"A belated self-preservation instinct."

"I'm not going to kill you."

"Your death might."

"Bullshit," Harry says, though he tries to make it nice. "I'm the luckiest person I know. I've survived a basilisk's bite, two killing curses, multiple wannabe dark lords, a ministry explosion, a zombie horde, and what was probably the bubonic plague. If I can handle all of that, then I'll be fine even in this world. I’ve roughed it before.”

Sirius gives him a look.

“Okay, maybe not to this extent, but Ron and Hermione and I spent the war living in a tent and a lot of the worlds I’ve visited haven’t been first class resorts."

"And what if it all goes wrong? It always does here. Your wand might be stolen or snapped like mine was."

“Believe me, I’ve tried to get rid of my wand. If there’s anything that can take the hallows from me, they’re welcome to try, but it won’t work for long. It’s annoyingly loyal to me and I doubt the wand will be the least bit tempted to leave with a muggle anyway." Harry pushes himself up until his face is inches away from Sirius’. "Are we at the bribery stage yet? If we're surviving the radiation now, it could mean that magical plants can survive it, too. I can get Neville's help—he's Sprout's assistant now—and see if he has any ideas on how to make more than this little patch of land habitable again. And I'm getting you a new wand. I could even send some samples from the trees in this world to Ollivander, see if they fit with one of his cores. And then we can help all those people down underground before they die from boredom or sun deficiency."

"Is this what you were thinking of all night?" Sirius asks, his hand trailing down Harry's neck and shoulder.

"Mostly, I thought about you," Harry replies, unable to be anything but honest. "Didn't you?"

"Every day," Sirius tells him. He swallows, looking uncertain and gentle, in a way Harry thinks he may have forgotten how to be in this strange, violent world. "I can't promise that you'll be happy here. But if you want to stay—"

"I do."

"—then stay, Harry. Please." Sirius' gaze is heavy with an emotion that he won't name, but it's alright. Harry knows what it is.

When Harry leans in to press his lips against Sirius', it feels almost like a first kiss, like a promise of a future that's still so unclear. One thing Harry knows for sure: that Sirius wants him. Everything else, it's just details, even the carnivorous sand worms. "I'll stay."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/).


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